VIDEO: Despite efforts, city of Savannah sewer spills climb

Lesley Conn/Savannah Morning News Even an experienced city of Savannah grease trap inspector can get caught by the smell of a full tank. Environmental compliance officers Curtis Cooper and Salimary Mojica inspect grease traps and check for proper cleaning schedules at restaurants all over Savannah.

Lesley Conn/Savannah Morning News City of Savannah Environmental Compliance Officers Salimary Mojica, left, and Curtis Cooper, center, issue a notice of violation to Sbarro's manager Ain Thinlavong because the restaurant's grease trap was more than 60 days overdue for emptying. She had 24 hours to correct, but Cooper was confident she would. She had just moved to a new location, but at her old store, he said, she had never had a violation.

Curtis Cooper and Salimary Mojica see the greasier side of Savannah dining.

Day after day, the two city of Savannah environmental compliance officers announce themselves at the back entrances of restaurants.

They want to inspect the grease traps. It’s a part of restaurant operations most diners don’t see, and probably wouldn’t want to. The underground tanks collect grease from the water before it enters city sewer lines.

“We still have establishments that don’t know they have a grease trap,” Cooper said. “Sometimes, they have to go to review their management plans to find them.”

What restaurants and other food-service vendors are expected to do is trap their brown grease — the leftovers from dishes that get scraped down sink drains — so it doesn’t get into city sewer lines.

Grease-clogged sewer lines are responsible for about 60 percent of the city’s backed-up lines, and a cleanup of a spill costs an average of $4,000 per incident. That means the city of Savannah’s 18 spills this year have cost about $72,000. A simple clog costs on average $500.

Grease is believed responsible for an October spill that sent backed-up sewage rolling into the Humane Society for Greater Savannah. The spill was slowed before it reached any animal cages.

A tougher approach

Yet in the 10 years since the city of Savannah approved an ordinance requiring restaurants and food vendors to maintain grease traps, officials have never fined a business.

Not once, they say.

Even after consistently finding clogged, congealed traps and sometimes devices so rusted out they allowed grease to flow into city sewer lines.

“We do want to remain business friendly, which is why we haven’t beat them about the head and shoulders,” said John Sawyer, the city’s acting director of public works and water resources. “We go out and talk to them, and we do try to work with them.”

That patience is about to run out.

The 18 spills this year are a 10-year high for such incidents.

Sawyer cites a combination of factors, including better reporting by the city and the removal of overflow valves that, in years past, would automatically release sewage into streets and ditches.

But restaurants refusing to comply with city ordinance is an issue, too. It’s not always possible to peg a spill to a specific location, but city officials say some of the out-of-compliance businesses are connected to lines that have produced backups and spills.

Sawyer says he has initiated a dozen administrative hearings with businesses that have failed to comply with city orders to clean or replace grease traps.

The city has the authority in its ordinance to issue a fine of up to $1,000.

Some businesses, Sawyer said, have disregarded orders to install new grease traps for more than a year.

“We hate to be seen as another regulatory agency, but you can see we’re talking about a lot of money,” Sawyer said, citing the cleanup costs.

That isn’t the only money at stake.

State oversight

In January, the city agreed to pay $23,750 to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division for discharging sewage into state waters.

The fine covered 51 spills from July 2007 to October 2011 and was part of a larger agreement about how the city would reduce spills.

State officials with the Environmental Protection Division’s Coastal Resources Division say the overall volume of Savannah’s spill history is smaller than other cities, but frequency also had to be considered.

“We felt it had reached a point where we needed to formalize it,” said David Lyle, program manager for the Coastal District.

The state’s corrective action plan sought to better track two parts of the city’s operation. It identified 92 areas where the sewer collection system needed improvement to pipes and manhole covers. The city is about halfway through its work list and expects to complete repairs by the end of 2013. Those repairs are in addition to the $3.8 million the city has spent in the last five years on sewer line repair.

Second, it asked for a better tracking system to link work orders to geographic mapping to determine how crews and repairs are being used.

The state’s consent order runs through 2017.

Protecting waterways

The state’s interest is in protecting waterways and avoiding public health hazards.

A spill earlier this month showed how easily it can happen.

A 6-inch PVC pipe buried several feet underground split lengthwise in the 200 block of West Lake Avenue off ACL Boulevard. The crack was only a few inches long, but by 7:42 a.m. residents called to report water bubbling up and running down the gutter.

It rolled about two blocks away before spilling into a drainage ditch, which connected a few hundred feet downstream to a pond bordered on its far bank by Interstate 516. The pond, city staff knew, is a popular fishing spot.

The milky gray trail was an obvious sign of untreated water, but the stench was another easy indicator.

The spill, calculated to be about 1,250 gallons, was small by state guidelines, which sets 10,000 gallons as the minimum for a major spill.

The response required an immediate diversion of city employees and equipment. As a backhoe and crew dug through blacktop and soil to find and replace the cracked pipe, other workers sandbagged storm drains and piled them into the ditch to keep the untreated waste from flowing to the pond.

Several more workers maneuvered a jet-vac truck along the ditch and the curbs, pumping up the gray water, then pulling over to a sewer line to dump it.

They would be there for hours.

As they worked, Jim Laplander, the city’s director of sewer conveyance and distribution, began notifying the EPD and the Health Department. Fecal coliform testing followed at the mouth of the ditch and at the far bank of the pond. In this case, testing showed no signs of contamination from sewage.

If there had been, testing would have continued as long as necessary until results were in normal range.

Posting health advisories after a spill is also a standard practice.

Laplander and his crews also planned to take a closer look at the pipes in the West Lake area.

Monday’s break was the third or fourth in about two years, more than typical, he said.

The pipe most likely will be scheduled for replacement, but it will be added to the list of other planned replacements. It could be five to 10 years, Laplander said, before the full line gets replaced.

STOP IT AT THE DRAIN

The grease that blocks city sewer lines isn’t just a commercial concern.

The drippings from fat, oils from cooking and other greasy remains shouldn’t go down the drain.

Follow an age-old practice to keep your drain clear: Use an old jar to collect drippings from cooking. Once the pan is drained, wipe as much of the grease away as possible with a paper towel before washing in the sink.

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For the resturaunts they should work with companies that process used oils and grease in food industry. Often they will work with those businesses to come up with the most effecient ways to collect those materials. With mandated demand as high as it is in the US for biofuels. Most of this material can safely be processes for this use. For the residentual material the city should offer collection points for these materials as well. Many of these processors will collect these materials free of charge. It is developing slowly, but we are learning to use our waste by products and not filling our landfills with them. The waste industry has even reached into biomass waste, these food scraps etc can be converted into compost and other useful materials. Many responsible companies like some Sam's Club are leading the way. Clogging our pipes, filling our landfills needlessly is an expense we can no longer afford. How much better could the cities resources be spent if they were not used correcting problems we create for ourselves ?

My story didn't go into this, but many of the restaurants do work with grease collectors for the grease they collect from deep-fat fryers and other cooking. There's a bit of a bidding war on because a new company has entered the market and is paying more for the yellow grease, which becomes biofuel.
What goes down the drain is known as brown grease, or sewer grease. Companies will come periodically to pump this stuff out of the traps, too, but I don't believe it has the biofuel market that yellow grease does. (Anyone have more detail to share on this?)
Hope that clarifies. Thanks for reading.

We are a local servicer of grease traps and work very closely with Curtis and his crew. Although the technology is not quite there to competetively convert brown grease to biodiesel, there are other uses for it. We have the only licensed grease trap disposal plant in our City and we recycle the trap grease, divert the solids from area landfills and treat the water to federal pretreatment standards. If you ever have any qestions about this matter, we would be happy to discuss.